Let the wedding bells ring, and brace for a run on rice and Champagne. It's going to be a joyous season for marriage in California this summer.

Gov. Jerry Brown told counties to start issuing marriage licenses as soon as possible in response to the Supreme Court's Proposition 8 ruling Wednesday. It was a great day: California finally became an equal marriage state, nine years after newly elected Mayor Gavin Newsom performed the first same-sex marriages in San Francisco.

For those who see marriage equality as a civil right and an affirmation of American family values, as we have for decades, a court decree declaring it so would have been ideal. But for the Roberts court -- which couldn't even work up enthusiasm for protecting citizens' right to vote -- striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act and failing to reverse an appeals court's rejection of Proposition 8 was a good day's work.

The Defense of Marriage Act was indefensible. Denying federal rights to legally married couples was an abomination. That the justices' vote was 5-4 says more about this court than the issue.

Proposition 8's gay marriage ban fell because the court found its proponents lacked standing to argue the case, as many predicted. This leaves the matter of marriage equality to states, but it saves California from the ordeal of another ballot proposition to repeal the ban.

Thank Brown, Attorney General Kamala Harris and their predecessors, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Lockyer, for declining on principle to defend the constitutionality of Proposition 8, which passed in 2008. It's unusual for elected officials to do this. Normally we would not expect them to refuse to defend voter-approved laws. But the nature of this proposition was unusual in that it enshrined discrimination in a constitution that had provided equal rights. Defending that precedent would not have been in California's interest.

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Bay Area voters never favored the marriage ban, but polls today show the proposition easily would be rejected statewide. Support for gay marriage is rising across the country. Young people increasingly don't see what the fuss is about, and as more gays and lesbians are open about their relationships, friends and relatives increasingly understand and accept them.

Same-sex marriage now is legal in 12 states and the District of Columbia. The tide has turned. The only question is how long it will take to reach all 50.

It's hard to imagine, say, Alabama voters supporting gay rights. But countervailing forces may materialize. For example, will states that allow gay marriage attract businesses whose workers want the freedom to marry? Will places that resist equality become pariahs in the manner of some Southern states where overt racism was slowest to dissipate?

Perhaps one of those states will produce what Proposition 8 was not: a case that forces the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the right to marriage itself. We'd like to think that even the Roberts court, if it had to, would stand up for equal rights.